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Sommerball.
Viola Otway, young, romantic and with little formal schooling, has been sent out into the world by her guardian to earn her living. But her lack of education and experience are no disadvantage for her job at the Society for the Conservation of Ancient Buildings, otherwise known as SCAB. Viola and her boss are sent to assess Inskip Park, a huge house with an incredible facade and domes like Brighton Pavilion. The roof leaks, the walls drip with damp, the food is terrible and the servants distinctly odd - but Viola is enchanted. She loves everything about the house, the garden, and the peculiarly eccentric Inskip family - particularly Jeremy, the handsome, lazy and utterly charming son and heir. Five days later Viola returns to London having made some life-changing decisions. Even an unexpected marriage proposal fails to deflect her from her declared to acquire an education...
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First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
Victoria Clayton
23 books51 followersSee also Victoria Walker for her two earlier children's fantasies: The Winter of Enchantment and The House Called Hadlows.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 7, 2021
It was well written and I can see why many likes it but it wasn't the book for me. Feelt rather bored by the plot and wasn't much invested in it. But it wasn't a bad book.
June 8, 2020
I fell in love with Victoria Clayton when I read this first book, and went on to read all her others. It is light women's fiction, but written so brilliantly by a very well-educated author that I was simply entranced. The time period is the 1970s, and the characters are both engaging and funny. The setting is one of my favourite themes in literature -- an old house that is crying out for attention.
December 3, 2016
Nancy Mitford meets Cold Comfort Farm. Lots of fun for anglophile readers.
September 12, 2014
I read Dance With Me over a few days and kept promising myself I'd read only for ten minutes... and coming to an hour later. I enjoyed it very much as it reminded me of Jilly Cooper's earlier books, and also of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and a bit of Madeleine Brent's books, Georgette Heyer and Anne McCaffrey's non-sf titles. It's a social comedy set in England in the 1970s; a period I remember well and a place I know through reading. The not-so-hapless heroine is a little ray of sunshine, but has a little streak of self-preservation (she doesn't necessarily own up to her errors!) that keeps her from being cloying. She's getting an education from a strange angle (art history, though she can barely spell) and learning to cook from a damaged Jew with a monkey named Josephine. The characters are presented in one light, and then, as if through a prism, we discover they are not exactly as we thought. The leisurely length on the book kept me ambling along happily, though with one eye on the date as this is a library book and I have an even fatter one to read yet and limited time. The only things I didn't really like were that I could see disasters approaching well before Viola could, and I kept thinking how uncomfortable it was/must be with mud, dust, mould and disgusting food... Still, a charming book on the whole which has the virtues and the not-so-good things of the other books/authors I mentioned above.
November 17, 2020
It turns out that one of my favorite contemporary novels, Dance With Me by Victoria Clayton, is a loose retelling of Mansfield Park. (Thank you to Goodreads for pointing it out to me. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier.)
Set in 1970’s England, Dance with Me tells the story of Viola who is quiet and perceptive, like Fanny Price, but also friendly, generous, and a little clumsy. An inauspicious trip to the countryside leaves Viola and her colleague stranded at Inskip Park where unexpected romantic relationships are formed, a play is successfully performed, and Viola discovers who she wants to be and be with.
Mansfield Park may not be my favorite Jane Austen novel, but Dance With Me is certainly my favorite Austen literary adaptation.
Set in 1970’s England, Dance with Me tells the story of Viola who is quiet and perceptive, like Fanny Price, but also friendly, generous, and a little clumsy. An inauspicious trip to the countryside leaves Viola and her colleague stranded at Inskip Park where unexpected romantic relationships are formed, a play is successfully performed, and Viola discovers who she wants to be and be with.
Mansfield Park may not be my favorite Jane Austen novel, but Dance With Me is certainly my favorite Austen literary adaptation.
July 30, 2014
Oh dear. Not her best. I've loved 2 of her other novels but this one rather sucked. Banal and trite. Had it been my first I wouldn't bother with any more but as it wasn't I shall read the others on my shelf in the hope they're more like Running Wild and Out of Love which were both far superior to this.
July 16, 2017
I'm surprised this book has such a high rating. I was bored out of my mind. It was not cute. It was not romantic. I felt like it was trying to be set in a few different time periods. Sometimes I am annoyed that I feel I have to finish a book cuz I spent too much time on this one
May 20, 2016
Jag hade inte tålamod med den så jag slutade läsa helt enkelt. Kom inte särskilt långt i den. Kanske försöker jag igen senare någon gång. Kanske.
December 6, 2016
Narrated by Viola Otway who feels herself to be undereducated after quite a privileged upbringing, but wants to earn her own living. She’s taken a job with a charitable group in London that renovates old houses, and lives in shared accommodation with some rather caricatured but interesting people. It’s set in the 1960s, although that’s not immediately obvious.
It’s a character-based novel, with a large cast of intriguing people, many of them somewhat caricatured. There’s some mild humour in the interactions, and in Viola’s accident-prone nature, but there are also some serious issues that are touched upon: unexpected pregnancies, class consciousness, post-natal depression, and more.
It’s light reading on the whole, despite these darker themes. Victoria Clayton has a very readable style, peppered with literary (and, in this book, artistic) allusions. I found myself liking Viola very much: she’s willing to learn, and has a warm heart.
The 1960s are remembered for their permissiveness, reflected in this book where discussion of intimacies seems commonplace. I found parts of that a bit sordid, even shocking at times; some, I thought, was unnecessary to the story-line. While I very much enjoyed the book, there were elements that made it start to feel like a soap rather than a novel.
The ending, as with the author’s earlier books, is a bit abrupt, but entirely satisfactory. Recommended, and probably best after the author's earlier books since reference is made to some of the storylines and people concerned.
It’s a character-based novel, with a large cast of intriguing people, many of them somewhat caricatured. There’s some mild humour in the interactions, and in Viola’s accident-prone nature, but there are also some serious issues that are touched upon: unexpected pregnancies, class consciousness, post-natal depression, and more.
It’s light reading on the whole, despite these darker themes. Victoria Clayton has a very readable style, peppered with literary (and, in this book, artistic) allusions. I found myself liking Viola very much: she’s willing to learn, and has a warm heart.
The 1960s are remembered for their permissiveness, reflected in this book where discussion of intimacies seems commonplace. I found parts of that a bit sordid, even shocking at times; some, I thought, was unnecessary to the story-line. While I very much enjoyed the book, there were elements that made it start to feel like a soap rather than a novel.
The ending, as with the author’s earlier books, is a bit abrupt, but entirely satisfactory. Recommended, and probably best after the author's earlier books since reference is made to some of the storylines and people concerned.
January 3, 2008
Jane Austen meets Cold Comfort Farm. A cut above the usual romance novel.
March 30, 2010
I'm a huge fan of all of Victoria Clayton's books.
June 11, 2009
I picked this up while on vacation because I needed something to read on the plane ride home, and this was, I thought, one of the better options of the books left behind by previous travelers. I'm not sure what it was about the book, but I really didn't enjoy it, and only managed to get about 120 pages into it before just giving up on it. I don't give up on books that often, but I figure life's too short to waste time struggling to finish a book that I'm not enjoying. And, since I didn't actually pay for the book, I don't feel too bad about it.
March 2, 2019
Jane who
Dodie Smith and E H Benson then Roamund Pilcher. I was despairing of finding something as refreshing and interesting as Jane Austen. Then I found one of those books that say “If you like,try.” So I had a go at Cloud among the Stars. It has taken me six utterly delicious months to read all the Victoria Clayton I can find. Thank you so very much. My wife has a degree in English and Drama and somehow manages to miss the sheer pleasure I get from miss Clayton, she doesn’t much like Terry Prachett either oh ignorance is bliss
Dodie Smith and E H Benson then Roamund Pilcher. I was despairing of finding something as refreshing and interesting as Jane Austen. Then I found one of those books that say “If you like,try.” So I had a go at Cloud among the Stars. It has taken me six utterly delicious months to read all the Victoria Clayton I can find. Thank you so very much. My wife has a degree in English and Drama and somehow manages to miss the sheer pleasure I get from miss Clayton, she doesn’t much like Terry Prachett either oh ignorance is bliss
January 28, 2026
2.5 stars What a strange tale. Not my usual read. I enjoyed the 'intelligentsia' touches, the interesting characters and the places they lived in.
June 14, 2008
Call it 3 1/2 stars... Not quite as good as Out of Love--a little lacking in focus and not quite as satisfying overall--but still a pleasant read. The tone of the book and the narrator's voice remind me a lot of I Capture the Castle and Dodie Smith's other non-juvenile books, but this book is set in 1976, so the occasional references to casual sex and drug-use are somewhat jarring! Still, I don't understand why Clayton's books are so underrepresented in US Libraries (I've checked ones in MD, NC, and AZ, without success). I will try at least one more title through ILL and see how that stacks up.
November 21, 2012
Loved this book. Easy read, with a very dreamy plot. Highlights a young girl's naive nature but also brings together a host of quirky characters that I think a lot of people can relate to.
May 16, 2017
Even better the second time!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews